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EXPOSITIONS EXPOSED 



SPEECH 



OF 



HOIST. S: S. 




OF NEW YORK, 



IN TIIE 




House of Kepkeseotatives, 



NOVEMBER 19, 1877. y^ 



* U. S. A. 

of WASH^ 



Life is like the Olympian games, where some came to obtain honor by joining 
and triumphing in the contest, many more to make money out of the requirements 
of the unusual assemblage ; but the happiest of all were those who bad no other 
interest but as lookers-on. 



WASHINGTON 

1877. 



L<D 



~U 






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SPEECH 

OP 

HON. S. ,S. COX. 



The House being in Committee of the Whole, (Mr. Springer in the chair,) and 
having under consideration the joint resolution (H. E.. No. 48) in relation to the 
international industrial exposition to be held in Paris in 1878 — 

Mr. COX, of New York, said : 

Mr. Chairman : It is with regret that I oppose what might seem 
the aggrandizement of our country by a foreign exhibition of its prod- 
ucts. If that statement involved the true question before us, pre- 
sented in the bill of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my regret would 
lead to silence. The fallacy of measures like this, consists in assum- 
ing that everything which seems to be for the welfare and glory of the 
country is truly so and that every beneficent law in seeming, is author- 
ized by our Constitution. 

LOVERS OF THE LABORING-MAN. 

The district which I represent is composed almost entirely of arti- 
sans and laborers. If this measure were constitutional and helpful 
to labor nothing would give me more pleasure than to contribute to 
its relief in the distress which everywhere prevails. But it by no 
means follows, because this bill is urged in the interest of those who 
live on the product of labor, that it will assist those who produce. 

It is an old sophism to profess to be good in order to do ill. The 
maxim which attributes many crimes in Liberty's name, is a house- 
hold truism, with a terrible history. When Napoleon III distributed 
the prizes at the great French exhibition in 1867 how eloquently he 
spoke of his lively solicitude for the interests of the workingmam 
Not long after that he crucified France. When a protectionist mem- 
ber was laboring here in 1870 for a high bounty for his own patented 
Bessemer steel he closed his touching appeal, not for himself, O, no I 
but for the workingman ! In vain do we wait for any movement here 
to relieve labor at home, to secure its just reward and elevate its con- 
dition. In vain do we look for any movement to harmonize it with 
capital that prosperity to both may come! Such measures as this are 
not moved by the masses. They come from the gilded apex, not the 
broad base of the common weal. No doubt this exhibition will be, as 
others have been, gorgeous in display. Aurelian fettered his caj)tive 
Zenobia with gold and the slave held up the golden fetter. He loaded 
the object to adorn his triumph, as we cumber our labor by such taxes 
as these that we may shine afar! 

No doubt the gentlemen who are foremost in asking these contri- 
butions for the display of their products are men entirely disinter- 
ested and patriotic. If their hands are not, the hands which work 
for them are callous with toil. Indeed, a showing of hands in this 
Congress would be an instructive illustration of the enormous work- 
ing ability of its members in earning an honest livelihood! 



THE USE OF STIMULANTS. 

This bill has been justified as similar bills have been justified, and 
especially the Centennial bill, on the ground thnt the country is in 
the condition of a man who has just turned the crisis of a violent 
fever, exhausted by long sickness and low diet. It was urged in that 
centennial debate (Record, Forty-fourth Congress, first session, page 
484) "that the system must be built up anew, and it must begin with 
stimulants." The necessity of stimulants to baild up an exhausted 
constitution, whether it be Federal or personal, might well be referred 
to a sanitary commission consisting of doctors learned in the law and 
in medicine. They would find that stimulants are dangerous rem- 
edies. 

OBJECTS OF THE MEASURE. 

Before, however, discussing the authority to levy large taxes as a 
stimulus, would it not be well to examine, first, what is the kind of 
stimulation and who are its subjects and ministers. 

The bill as originally propounded by the President in his message 
and by the Secretary of State seems to intend something more than 
the benefit of American industries. This bill proposes to stimulate 
their sinking condition and contribute to their advancement at home 
and abroad. It might truly be entitled " An act to levy taxes to allow 
our gentry to visit Paris, advertise goods, and erect a corn-kitchen.' r 
[Laughter.] 

THE FIRST PROGRAMME. 

The bill as originally contributed by the Secretary of State proposed 
to payout of our Treasury $225,000 to defray expenses of commission- 
ers, experts, scientists, artisans, civil agencies, traveling agents, and 
transportations across the country and ocean, as well as landing, pro- 
tecting, and reshipping of goods. To this were added expenses of 
reporters and reports, some $12,000 ; and after exhausting all possi- 
ble methods of extracting money from the Treasury for this purpose 
so foreign to our shores and our Constitution, a needless appropria- 
ion of $13,000 for " contingencies" was thrust in to round the whole 
sum of $225,000. 

Our committee were not disposed to accept all these extravagant 
and indefinite items. They have introduced a bill of their own, only 
a little less extravagant and in almost every regard as thoroughly 
indefensible. The majority report asks for $150,000 for the purposes 
indicated by the Secretary of State ; and, sad to say, they struck out, 
against my vote, the Indian corn proposition of my intelligent and 
honorable colleague, [Mr. Hewitt.] I have endeavored, by an amend- 
ment and a smaller sum, to rescue the agricultural interest from this 
neglect of the committee. 

WHAT THE MINORITY PROPOSE. 

The minority of the committee, which reported this bill, while not 
agreeing to its constitutionality, see no objection to furnishing Gov- 
ernment vessels for transportation to and from France, free of charge, 
•of articles for exhibition ; nor do they undertake to say that any 
discourtesy should be allowed in not fully recognizing the invitation 
•of France ; but, in carrying out the provisions of the joint resolution, 
they prefer that no tax should be levied for so doubtful a purpose. 
If other gentlemen, however, can find it to be constitutional to vote 
appropriations for these objects, I offer an amendment for funds 
adequate to secure official recognition, to be placed with the Secre- 
tary of State, and another and separate fund for the Commissioner of 
Agriculture, to be used at his discretion. More than that would be 
wasteful excess. 



A SHOP AND SHOW AND A SACRIFICE. 

I proceed to the consideration of the objects — the real and not the 
simulated objects of the bill. This exposition of Paris, like others, 
including onr Centennial, savors of the shop and displays like a show. 
There is not a particle of patriotism in it ; indeed the old word 
patriotism has almost lost its meaning. We have many persons ready 
to live for and on their country, but it is hard to find within the 
broad domain of this heaven-blessed land one who would die for it. 
To extract money deftly from the Treasury, in our new lexicon, that 
is patriotism. , 

There was a young lady in a New England town to whom a fortune 
was bequeathed. She had a missionary spirit, and called the deacons 
of her church around her to know where she ought to go to bestow 
her grace and means in saving sinners. The good deacons spoke of 
Timbuctoo and India; but said she, "Is not Paris, too, a very bad 
place V 1 They said it was : full of fashion, frivolity, and wickedness. 
She said she thought she would try Paris first. The promoters of 
this bill are equally good. They would save Paris from its sins 
by sewing-machines, pianos, sulky-plows, and Indian corn. They 
would sacrifice much of time and labor to reclaim the ignorant and 
bad ; only they want our poor people to pay for the pious pilgrimage 
by an appropriation. 

THE FLAG AND AN APPROPRIATION. 

I was in hopes that the persiflage which is always called in to 
glorify such appropriations had evaporated with the centennial year 
and exhibition. Do we not recall how members apostrophized George 
Washington, pictured on one side of you, Mr. Speaker, and La Fayette 
on the other ? 

We have had the same sublimity of speech on this measure ; but 
one tires of a perpetual diet so highly seasoned. This kind of rhetoric, 
Mr. Speaker, would be interesting and harmless if it did not tend to 
empty the Treasury and add fresh burdens to an already overburdened 
people. 

FOREIGN RHETORIC ON SIMILAR THEMES. 

Such grandiose expressions have not infrequently been used in 
other countries to fill the swelling exchequers of selfish and mercenary 
men. Even the English exhibitions of 1851 and 1862, which had no 
appropriation, Avere heralded by a chorus of superb harmonies whose 
powerful tones seemed to ring out in stupendous unison like the 
sixty-five hundred voices which I heard in the Crystal Palace of that 
year : 

All people that on earth do dwell, 

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice ; 

while "amens" and "hallelujahs" were to usher in the reign of " peace 
and goodwill to men." Conquest and carnage were to be abjured 
forever. Alas! for the bloody sequel. 

The main business of that exhibition, so far as America was con- 
cerned, was limited to our frightful edifice of india-rubber, which 
typified the elasticity of our national conscience and development ; 
to our thousands of daguerreotypes to show the remarkable men and 
vanity of our country, to two of our Iowa Indians, who stood in pro- 
found sorrow, betraying their nostalgia, trophies of our conquering 
and implacable civilization, and to the beautiful Greek Slave, the 
occasion of satire and irony upon our instiutions! 

MANUFACTURE OF MILLENNIUMS. 

The Paris exhibition of 1862 was also heralded as a harbinger of 



peace among the nations. It was the symbol of the federation of the 
world. Then arose, as soon again will arise, upon the banks of the 
Seine a dazzling edifice, with its imperial commission and splendors. 
Some called it a great sham, an iniquitous job, and a crying scandal ; 
but rhetoricians in France, with picturesque verbiage, transformed 
it into a universal congress of art and industry, a giant tournament 
of thinkers and workers, and, as a climax, an infallible guarantee 
of the brotherhood of nations. Yet that Emperor who patronized 
that exhibition of peace and good will, and who, like another Augus- 
tus, had transformed an old metropolis of filth, lawlessness, and vanity 
into a seat of splendor, aedility, and luxury, fell with France at Sedan, 
and the reign of Mars was postponed only by exhaustion and insen- 
sate fury. That French exhibition, like that portion of Vienna which 
some fondly called "our own," was described as one of "jobbers, 
higglers, and hagglers, incredibly avid of riches, unblushingly extor- 
tionate in trade, ceaselessly hungering after francs and centimes." It 
was not in the power of the third Napoleon, nor that of the shows 
and shops that belonged to his era of brass and gold, to manufact- 
ure a millenium. 

THE FIELD OF MARS. 

The Champ de Mars had many memories of war and revolution. 
It was upon this field that Robespierre erected an altar to the Su- 
preme Being. Surrounded by his chiefs, he celebrated the fete by 
dedicating flowers, fruits, and ears of corn, while all swore to defend, 
the republic. It was then and there that the grand hymn to God 
was sung, while the sanguinary hypocrites offered our innocent maize 
to propitiate the Eternal. It was accounted a grand thing to open 
upon its plaza an exhibition of arts and mechanism, where oriental 
magnificence in fabrics contested the palm with the severer grandeurs 
of western skill. To the sybarite and the mechanic, to the chemist 
and soldier, to artisan and tradesman, to sultan and subject gathered 
upon this historic ground, there seemed for a time to dawn a roseate 
era of universal interchange. Upon that field of Mars, which cen- 
turies before had been the gathering place of warriors, was to be real- 
ized more than the dreams of Utopia. It was to be a mart of industry 
typical of pruniug-hooks and plowshares. How long after that, be- 
fore the German Uhlans encamped within the walls of the fated city ? 

The wars which have since followed show that in giving the 
"Legion of honor" to the Yankee piano-forte with a fiddle attach- 
ment, or a gold medal for a carved Belgian cupboard, the lion was not 
induced to lie down with the lamb, except he had swallowed the 
lamb. The meanness and rapacity of its promoters were only excelled 
by the disgraceful exhibition which our own nation made subse- 
quently at Vienna. 

SHODDY, GOOD AND BAD. 

It was the display of shoddy in its worse sense. I would rescue 
shoddy from its sinister meaning. Shoddy has become a term of re- 
proach, but if you stop its supply the price of wool would double. 
Millions of people would then miss their warm winter clothes. If, 
however, shoddy is not mixed with new wool, it becomes not only 
a disgrace to trade, but a just nickname for mercenary roguery. If 
our exhibition at Paris should degenerate into the unmixed shoddy, 
as at Vienna, better not to have exhibited our weakness at all. 

EXHIBITION THIRST. 

The most that the Paris exhibition did for America was the intro- 
duction of American drinks. There was a perpetual disease in and 



around it called the " Exhibition thirst," which was well described by- 
George Augustus Sala as " leading to wandering in spirits and in 
mind." If you asked any question of the stranger about Paris, he 
dilated upon the " noggs," " cobblers," " smashers," " cocktails," " eye- 
openers," "moustache-twisters," and " corpse-revivers" of the Ameri- 
can restaurant. [Laughter.] Stewed oysters, terrapins, soft-shell 
crabs, canvas-back ducks, and prairie hens were introduced under the 
Stars and Stripes, to the attention, admiration, amazement, and stom- 
achs of the French population for the first time. Nor are the provis- 
ions of the original bill for a corn diet any novelty in France, for 
green com and succotash were as common then as cobblers and cock- 
tails. [Laughter.] 

GENERAL- WELFARE CLAUSE. 

Under some clause of our Constitution for the general welfare and 
happiness of mankind our appropriation for this exhibition is justi- 
fied. Such exhibitions not only fail to give dignity and grandeur to 
to our character as a nation, but utterly fail to contribute to the 
common defense and general welfare. They fail to usher in that 
intelligence, courage, and unassuming glory which should illustrate 
the first republic of the world. 

STRICT CONSTRUCTION AND RESERVED POWER. 

Seriously, Mr. Chairman, it is about time that the pendulum swung 
from one extreme to the other in relation to constitutional construc- 
tion and taxation. It is true that parties seem to be changing on 
vital rules of construction. What has not the last year brought 
forth ? Let me use a fable to teach the lesson. It is said that there 
was a giant once who swallowed windmills without choking, but who 
was suffocated next day by a piece of fresh butter! [Laughter.] So 
with our republican State-rights friends. There was nothing too huge 
or crooked which they did not swallow under the war power and for 
twelve years after the war; but when the votes of States falsely 
personated came to us in a Federal way their hatred of State rights 
vanished. They swallowed State rights as if they had the^ lubricity 
of butter. The recent elections look as if they suffered, if they were 
not suffocated, by the act of deglutition. 

It is well, when our opponents here are carrying reserved rights to 
such extremes, for us to consider how far we are swinging in the 
other direction. If this measure is to be justified in a democratic 
House, where is the limit for any and all objects which hover like 
birds of prey about the Treasury ? 

Whatever good may be done our industries by such expositions, 
there are many distinguished in public life who are not ready to 
admit that there is any authority to tax for any such purpose. When 
we ask those who favor such schemes for any grant of power to 
sanction such appropriations, they spread into platitudes. In the 
Centennial debate one member justified the appropriation by saying 
that we had a right to show other nations that we exist, and, there- 
fore, an appropriation was justifiable. (Record, Forty-first Congress, 
first session, page 522.) As Mr. Townsend, of Pennsylvania, remarked: 

"We have expended more than five hillions to render it certain that this nation 
shall exist. We have spent five hillions to have a centennial, and when you come 
to the constitutional question — the question of right— I say, sir, that if a nation 
has a right to exist, it has a right to show to the world that it does exist. 

Another member argued that, as it only cost three and a half cents 
apiece to our people, and as it was the boiled-down essence of all 
the Fourth of Julys for a hundred years, the appropriation was con- 



8 

stitutional. Another member argued that, inasmuch as America was 
almost a terra incognita to Europe, by bringing Europe to us, we would 
enable its people to see our country for themselves ; and therefore it was 
constitutional to appropriate a million and a half of dollars. Another 
argued that, as the retina of the soul would be painted by panoramas 
of Bunker Hill and of Yorktown, and of Washington buffeting with 
the waves of the icy Delaware, it was constitutional. [Laughter.] 
Aside from this irrelevant rhetoric I put a question as one belong- 
ing to the old school of strict constructionists, from which I have 
rarely deviated in a long service : Where is the power in Congress 
to grant such an appropriation ? Point to a line which justifies 
it ! Standing on the ancient ways, if we have failed before, let 
us now assert that it is greater to preserve our fundamental law 
from infraction than to spread over all the continents every division 
of our industry, commercial, mechanical, physical, economical, or mis- 
cellaneous. As the greater includes the less; as the creator is above 
the creature, is it not a greater incentive to other nations to be- 
hold our Republic preserve its integrity and its Constitution, its 
genius and polity, its many-in-one, its local distinct from its Federal 
power over affairs, than to display all our wealth or power in mere 
material success? What are all the arts, whether related to the 
alimentary, sanitary, domiciliary, locomotive, sensitive, intellect- 
ual, or social life, which make up these universal shows, compared 
with the elemental and undying principles which lift our Republic 
above the waves of time and the tempests of revolution ? Weave 
what warp and woof you may ; delve for the mineral, however rich ; 
construct your titanic machines, however grand, complicated, or 
refined ; calculate your longitudes or discover new moons by mathe- 
matics and telescopes ; put your girdle around the earth or under 
the sea, by chemistry ; chisel the Greek Slave with Powers ; excel 
Gerdme or Meisonnier or Rosa Bonheurupon the easel ; display terra- 
cottas more beautiful than those of Harze\ bronzes better than Bar- 
b^dienne's, or porcelain the peer of Sevres ; tapestry and carpets rival- 
ing the Gobelins or Aubesson ; jewelry to outshine Christofle, of Paris, 
or Castellani, of Rome ; make better mosaics than of Salviati, or the 
enamels better than those of Le Fecq ; reproduce here the ceramic 
and other lost arts which are now reviving throughout Europe ; and 
you will yet findno compensation in these accomplishments, in the mim- 
icry and mummery of the army of honorary nabobs, dandies, and bum- 
mers who cluster about a foreign exhibition. Much less, sir, will these 
achievements condone for any fracture in its smallest part of the great- 
est refinement of civil polity, which is illustrated in our political faith, 
order, and Constitution. [Applause.] Not for all the grandeur of 
mechanical science and skill should we barter this precious principle 
of construction applied to that instrument by all our best statesmen 
and courts, namely, that powers not granted by the Constitution can- 
not be exercised by Congress, and that no powers are granted except 
what are expressed as such, or are fairly inferable as requisite means 
to attain the end of a power itself granted. 

THE TAXING CLAUSE— ITS MEANING. 

Such appropriations as that now under discussion have been 
sought to be justified by the first clause of the eighth section of the 
first article of the Constitution : 

Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, 
to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the 
United States. 



9 

If, under this clause, this appropriation can be made, we are on an 
uncertain and limitless sea; any appropriation, for any purpose, is 
then possible. If this clause be applicable, it is a lie to say that our 
Government is one of special and enumerated powers. 

Is it said that by the words " general welfare " no appropriation can 
be made unless it is designed to effect that object ? Who is to deter- 
mine what is the general welfare ? Congress, then, at its discretion, 
may determine what is or is not for the general welfare. There is 
no limit to the power. You can take money for any purpose. By 
a like loose construction you may establish schools in Thibet or 
extract sunbeams from cucumbers. Mr. Chairman, there is but one 
rule; it is inflexible. You can only provide tor the general welfare 
by exercising the powers that are delegated to you in the Constitu- 
tion. You cannot go outside of the express delegations of power, 
and roam at will, to find something that might promote that welfare. 

PRECEDENTS. 

It will not do to say that precedents have been made. Almost 
every provision of the Constitution has been downtrodden by bad 
administration or legislation. It is the crying sin of our time that 
that our lands and moneys have been squandered that scoundrels and 
bankrupts might live in luxury. And even for a good purpose I 
should never sanction an erroneous construction of the Constitution, 
lest a precedent should creep in upon the State, for its dishonor and 
ruin. 

The gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. Tucker,] who is both a lawyer 
and a publicist, in the Centennial discussion divided this power to lay 
and collect taxes, &c, into three branches, (Record, Fourty-fourth 
Congress, first session, page 510:) First, as to laying and collecting; 
second, as to paying debts and providing for the common defense and 
general welfare; and, third, a qualification on the power in the first 
branch of the sentence. 

To suppose — 

Said he — 

that the learned men of the convention had injected as a substantial power the 
words iu the secoud branch of the sentence, and then in the third branch qualified 
the first branch, would be to attribute to them a miserable lack of knowledge of 
the rules of grammar and of style. Hence the usual and generally conceded con- 
struction of the two clauses has been that it attached to the first clause as a defi- 
nition of the purposes of the tax power, limiting its use only to such objects ; and 
that the second clause cannot be clearly held to contain a new and substantial 
giant of pow«r. 

Who ever believed that this power to levy and collect taxes, &c, 
interpreted as it has been by Mr. Madison in the forty-first number 
of The Federalist, amounted to an unlimited commission to exercise 
every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common 
defense or general welfare? " No stronger proof," said he, " can be 
given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections 
than their stooping to such a misconstruction. Error," he said, 
" would always receive its own condemnation." 

THE RULE APPLIED TO EXHIBITIONS PAST. 

Then let me inquire whether a bill of this kind comes within such 
a construction as I have indicated. Surely there has existed much 
doubt as to our authority to vote money for these shows. Austria 
invited us to Vienna, first on the 12th of July, 1870, and, finding us 
reluctant, again on the 22d of September, 1871. Congress took no 
action until June 10, 1872, and then authorized the President to ap- 



Js 



10 

point our agents ; but provided : " That such appointments shall not 
impose on this Government any liability for the expense which they 
may occasion." This was all, until February 14, 1873, when $200,000 
were passed through Congress. Of this nearly all was spent; how, 
will appear hereafter. But our first cautious action is to be noted. 
We had not then entered so largely on speculations by act of Congress. 
Again : In the case of the Centennial appropriation, at its inception, 
in 1872, its promoters were so doubtful of the power of appropriation 
that they simply asked for and obtained an act of Congress creating 
a commission to prepare plans and buildings but providing that the 
United States should not be liable for any expense attending such 
exhibition or by reason of the same. If this was the cautious action 
at first as to the Centennial, what can we say of the audacity of 
those who would unconstitutionally create a mercenary expedition 
to Paris, to exhibit their goods, wares and merchandise, for their 
own greed and gain ? Who contends seriously that for the purpose 
of transporting samples and advertising them in Paris, an army 
of officers, such as this measure proposes, was ever contemplated 
>y the men who framed our organic law? If the fathers of the 
Republic were jealous of entangling alliances abroad, and made 
our country respected and great through independence of Europe, 
where is the authority to impress upon the effete dynasties of the 
Old World or their republican copyists in France, our toys, and drinks, 
and boot-jacks, and turnips, and all the variety of our mineral, agri- 
cultural, and manufacturing products ? Were not these matters to be 
left to economic laws ? Where is the clause of the Constitution to 
levy and collect taxes, that our rich manufacturers may display their 
gin and buttons, their guttaTpercha and glue, their iron machines 
v and agricultural implements before the world? 

FOREIGNERS COPY OUR INVENTIONS. 

First. If such appropriations were constitutional how would it aid 
our artisans or manufacturers by showing foreigners how to copy our 
inventions, improve upon our skill, or only to make an outlet and 
market for our products, which must of course be temporary, if it is 
intended to teach other nations our tricks of trade and our genius for 
improvement ? There are many manufacturers who understand what 
is meant by this comment on our display. It helps a temporary 
market only to ruin it permanently. 

APPROPRIATIONS NOT NECESSARY TO TRADE. 

Second. Suppose that such exhibitions do enlarge our markets, as 
contended for by the eloquent member from Wisconsin, [Mr. Will- 
iams,] and constitute an incentive to other nations to improve upon 
their machinery and production, cannot the same object be accom- 
plished without a violation of the Constitution or without an appro- 
priation by Congress ? Does it require a torture of the one or an act 
of the other to inspire the maker of soft textures of wool, or fine 
linen, or glossy silk ? Do we need the stimulus of an exposition to 
bring our meat-stuffs, bread-stuffs, eggs, butter, cattle, horses, and 
mules into a foreign market ? Did the centennial make our grain 
crops? Already we are growing in our export trade by the hundred 
millions, through refrigerators and steam, quick transit, and smart 
agencies. Appropriations did not inspire Jacquard's dream, out of 
which came his wonderful loom. Did the Corliss engine, mighty as 
a Titan to rend the oak, result from the Centennial or antedate it ? 
Was it a Government appropriation which gave Whitney's cotton- 
gin to the South, with its three hundred millions saved per annum ? 



11 

Did the exhibition of 1851 cause McCormick's reaper or only show 
it off ? Suppose that the exhibition should incite to the discovery 
of new elements of industry for the amelioration of mankind, does 
it follow that a Government appropriation is necessary for that pur- 
pose ? Did Congress start the sewing-machine, or the Gatling gun, 
or the steamship, or Bessemer steel ? If the truth were told, these 
matters came in spite of Congress. We have American hardware 
stores in Germany, and our cottons now go to South America, but it 
is in spite of Federal law. Does Steinway or Weber want an act of 
Congress to send their pianos to a market, or Wheeler & Wilson their 
sewing-machines to Japan, or Herring his safes to Europe ? They 
are there already. Point to a single page of the statutes where 
a dollar has been authorized to be expended, except indirectly, by 
tariffs except to hurt and not to help traffic and labor. 

Was it because Franklin was a member of the constitutional con- 
vention that he discovered new uses for the electric phenomena 
which then attracted the attention of the scientific world, or was it 
because he was a volunteer without aid, enlisting in the army of sci- 
ence ? He was a simple member of a literary society in Philadelphia. 
Having his attention called to a recent discovery, the phenomena of 
the Leyden jar, from that moment he put the question, cui bono? 
He wrote to the Royal Society of London his first disappointment in 
failing to find any practical application of the science : 

Chagrined a little — 

He wrote — 

that we have hitherto been able to produce nothing in the way of use to mankind, 
and the hot weather coming on, when electrical experiments are not so agreeable, 
it is proposed to put an end to them for the season, somewhat humorously, in a 
party of pleasure, on the banks of the Schuylkill. Spirits, at the same time, are to 
be tired by a spark sent from side to side through the river, without any other con- 
ductor than the water, an experiment which we some time since performed to the 
amazement of many. A turkey is to be killed for dinner by the electrical shock, 
and roasted by the electrical jack before a fire kindled by the electrical bottle — 

Since known as the Leyden phial — 

■when the health of all the famous electricians in England, Holland, France, and 
Germany are to be drank in electrified bumpers, under the discharge of guns from 
the electrical battery. 

True, afterward he invented lightning-rods, with pointed con- 
ductors, to save houses and ships and what not ; but at first so averse 
were the laughing philosophers of the Royal Society to Franklin's 
" points " that they actually caused blunt conductors to be placed 
upon the British palace ! But did Franklin ask for an appropriation ? 

Was the safety-lamp, or the locomotive, or the wonderful art and 
mechanism displayed in printing-machines and calico-printing, in 
hydraulic machinery, the construction of bridges, Whitworth's mi- 
crometer, turning, planing, boring and cutting machines, or his 
wondrous lathe, the result of English or French exhibitions ? True, 
they were exhibited there, and their exhibition may have been the 
cause of other and better inventions ; but I deny that the English 
exhibition of 1851 became instrumental through Government aid for 
such purposes. 

THE EXHIBITION OF 1851 — NO APPROPRIATION. 

There was not a shilling appropriated by Great Britain for that 
exhibition or its London andDublin successors, although Parliament is 
not restrained as we are by any question of constitutional want of 
power. The success of that exhibition was due to the action of the 
liberal-minded Prince Albert, who offered himself to the public as 



12 

their leader. It was long discussed whether it should be limited 
to British industry; for there was an isolation about the British 
mind then, that led to a prejudice against foreign productions of 
machinery, science, and taste. It was doubted then by many, as it 
has been doubted much in this country, by a class of economists, 
whether such productions, which are of no country but belong to 
the world, would be of particular advantage to British industry by 
being placed in competition. 

The great exhibition of 1851 was the beginning of a new era of 
British prosperity, because it opened a thousand shut avenues of trade. 
Paxton's fairy palace, itself a greater wonder than of all within it, 
was exhibited by England as a spectacle of the world's progress and 
as a token of future English supremacy, 

"When its blazing arch of glass 
Leaped like a fountain from the grass 
To meet the sun. 

When its rare pavilion had been built and glassed, and sung by poets 
and blessed by archbishops, was there any dedication by government f 
As M. Chevalier writes, (Dr. Lardner's Great Exhibition, page 479 :) 

It was projected, organized, and completed, from first to last, without govern- 
mental interference. The arrangements were made, the plans prepared, the work 
executed, without the authorities claiming the initiation or desiring to take the 
patronage of the enterprise. For such an exhibition there would have been in 
France twenty times more ministerial ordinances issued, official circulars signed 
and published, a hundred times more scraps of paper blotted in the bureau of the 
French ministry of commerce than in that of the Board of Trade of London. 

OVERLEGISLATION. 

Doubtless Prince Albert took the largest share in the arrangements, 
but it was in his individual capacity. It was personal influence 
alone, more considerable than his rank, that he brought to bear. 
Private meetings began as early as 1849. Communications were sent 
to industrial establishments, but no law ordinance, no order of coun- 
cil, was ever issued. Moneys were raised, medals and rewards were 
provided for, capitalists, manufacturers, and public-spirited men or- 
ganized and consummated the exhibition. The only interference of 
government was the semblance of an official nomination by the Queen 
of the royal commission. In our amendment to this bill, the minority 
contemplate similar recognition. At one time the English govern- 
ment was solicited to take a great share of the direction of the enter- 
prise of 1851, on the ground that it was indispensable to success ; 
but, wisely appreciating the part it should take, it declined the offer, 
"which," says M. Chevalier, "in any other country would have been 
an irresistible temptation." The collective force which made that 
exhibition the wonder of the world came out of the liberty of pri- 
vate enterprise. It was an illustration of fitness to govern by self- 
abnegation of power. 

This interference by Government with such mere material interests 
is a pregnant example of bad government, or what Herbert Spencer 
calls " overlegislation." It received a stab from the lips of Governor 
Tilden on his return from Europe, in general denunciation of Federal 
interference in extraneous and private objects. As in France the gov- 
ernment takes charge of the smallest details, from the running of a 
bath to the raising of horses" ; as in Spain or in Turkey the government 
either manufactures cigars or farms out its revenues, thus illustrat- 
ing the pernicious principle of monopoly, oppression, and intervention, 
so in our country in these latter days we are beginning to copy these 
pernicious patterns of paternal government. 



13 

FAIRS AltE NOT A NEW THING. 

The Exhibition of 1851 was the first of the international kind. Be- 
fore that time the various nations of Europe and of Asia had their fairs 
and shows. They date from the earliest eras. The Greeks an d Romans 
had them. The German term " massen," from mass, meant a fair. 
In France they are thirteen hundred years old. Alfred the Great, 
brought them to Great Britain. Hundreds of thousands have attended 
the French fairs. Mecca has had them, and the Ganges has seen its 
thousands of trades thus gathered. I have seen them in remote parts 
of Northern Africa, where men — nomads of the plain, and traders of 
the city — come together to buy and sell, barter and learn. The great- 
estof all these is in Asia, on the borders of China, at Nizhni Novogorod, 
where thousands semi-yearly congregate. But 1851 gave a new impe- 
tus to these undertakings, running not through days and weeks but 
whole seasons. Since 1851, there have been not less than twenty 
universal exhibitions, including our own Centennial, besides the 
great fairs of London, Paris, and Vienna. Munich, Florence, New 
York, Amsterdam, Dublin, Cork, Cologne, Lyons, Oporto, Stettin, and 
even New Zealand and Japan, have had their grand symposia of 
industry. If we are to begin appropriations for such universal objects, 
1 where are we to draw the line and where end? 

THE ENGLISH EXHIBITIONS WITHOUT APPROPRIATIONS. 

I remember well, when twenty -five years younger, visiting that 
more than Aladdin palace in Hyde Park. That mighty building yet 
rises among my earliest and most attractive reminiscences. Day 
after day I wandered along its aisles, wondering at the mystery of 
the maker and the genius of the inventor, astounded at the power 
which combined the atoms of earth, water, and air, and harnessed the 
forces of nature, as the outward symbol of the everlasting brain of 
aggressive man. But it had no appropriation ! What Professor 
Sewell wrote of the divine Plato, likening his ethics to a splendid 
Gothic monster, I felt, as I wandered into these mazes, far sinking 
into splendors : " We may stand among his venerable works as in a 
vast and consecrated fabric. Vistas and aisles of thought opening 
on every side; high thoughts, that raise the mind to heaven; pillars 
and niches and cells within cells, mixing in seeming confusion, and a 
veil of tracery and foliage and grotesque imagery thrown over all, 
but all rich with a light streaming through dim religious forms ; all 
leading up to God; all blest with an effluence from Him, though an 
effluence dimmed and half lost in the contaminated reason of man." 
Yet, Mr. Chairman, there was no appropriation for that grand exhi- 
bition ! What manifestations of beauty and of art from all lands rise 
upon my vision as I recall that palace of industry! Ancient and mod- 
ern times alike contributed to adorn and glorify this palace, and yet 
there was no appropriation. From China to Peru, from the mines of 
Norway and of Mexico, from the fabricators of India, from the gor 
geous east, with its barbaric purple and gold interwoven in its tex- 
tures, to the rude hut and spear of the American Indians and Afri- 
can Caffirs, there was one grand picture of human industry, to illus- 
trate the maxim of the son of Sirach, of ancient Jewish time : 

The principal things for the whole use of man's life are water, fire, iron, and 
salt, flour of wheat, honey, milk, and the blood of grape, oil, and clothing. 

All for the delectation and utility of our kind. This rare exhibi- 
tion and forerunner of so many others, not only did not depend upon 
government largesses for its success but refused them as a means for 
its consummation. From that time England increased her colonial 



14 

and foreign trades. Her exports np to the time of her next great 
exhibition in 1862 more than doubled. Her colonies emerged out of 
discontent and difficulty ; and while the great streams of her empire 
were bridged by triumphant mechanism, all parts of her dependen- 
cies were imbound in a common British glory. Yet not one shilling 
from the government aided in this work. 

When the great exhibition of 1851 in England was projected, 
who leaped forward to contribute funds voluntarily ? A hundred thou- 
sand dollars was at once subscribed, for medals and awards ; three 
hundred thousand then followed for other purposes. Messrs. Munday, 
great contractors, proposed to undertake the construction of the 
building at their own risk. Their offer was declined, because they 
were contractors. One individual, Mr. Peto, who then bore the same 
relation to England and her railroads that certain men now sustain 
to ours, subscribed $250,000 ; and a banker, Mr. Lloyd, followed ; and 
the financial notabilities who answer to our Coopers, Seligmans, Bel- 
monts, and other rich men gave individual guarantees amounting to 
$100,000, upon which the Bank of England offered to make advances. 
Five thousand people registered themselves as promoters ; nearly ten 
millions' worth of articles was shown ; six million people visited it, and 
a balance of £213,305 15s. 8d., or nearly $1,000,000,000 resulted as net 
profit. It was not necessary, as it is not now necessary, that govern- 
ment should give bounties to have the concurrence of other govern- 
ments for such objects. 

The exhibition of 1851 succeeded because of the courage of the 
thought that international rivalry could be accomplished without 
government aid. 

It was repeated in 1862 by private enterprise. The advantages of 
such enterprise to England between 1851 and 1862 need not be com- 
mented on. It encouraged free trade ; it repealed the duties on soap 
and paper, the only manufactures then which had been thwarted by 
excise restrictions. It increased the facilities by post and abolished 
taxes on knowledge. It led to the repeal of duties on raw materials. 
It gave strength to English production in all its branches and yet 
not a government penny for appropriation ! Is it possible that we 
cannot carry our flag abroad without the suggestion of lucre and the 
meanness of speculation ? 

OUR CAPITALISTS BEGGING GOVERNMENT HELP. 

And yet the capitalists of this country — $500,000,000 represented — 
come in the name of our pauper labor and ask additional taxes to be 
laid upon our workingmen for their own special greed and glory. If 
these capitalists desire so much to assist the laboring-men and to do 
it by means which are themselves considered doubtful, why not adopt 
the bill of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Wright,] to take 
from the Treasury money enough to send the poor of our cities, 
packed in tenement-houses and almost destitute of good food, shelter, 
and clothing, to the rich prairies of the West or the teeming savan- 
nas of the South. 

OUR SCIENCE AT HOME. 

But if gentlemen must spend money to glorify our science and art, 
let them go to our Observatory and observe its dilapidated condition. 
Yet what a pride, legitimate and glorious, has it not become ? It en- 
ables us to determine points within our own land, their latitudes and 
longitudes, boundaries and stations. Co-operating with the Navy, it 
determines points abroad. It is the depot where the chronometers 
for the Navy are kept and rated, and from which naval vessels are 



15 

supplied with them on going into commission. It drops a time-ball 
at noon from its own dome, and, through the agency of the telegraph 
wires, a hall at noon also in the city of New York, and gives the time 
to the wires for transmission through the United States. It has ren- 
dered essential aid to the American Ephemeris and Nautical Alma- 
nac by perfecting the tables indispensable to the navigator and the 
astronomer. Quotations from foreign scientific reviews could be ad- 
duced to prOve that the work- of the United States Observatory is 
highly appreciated abroad. The distinguished astronomer of Home, 
Padre Secchi, places together in the first class the observatories of 
Pulkova, Greenwich, and Washington. The search for new objects 
has never been made a part of the regular work of the Observatory, 
because it has been felt that an institution supported at the expense 
of the nation should confine its energies to fields known to be remu- 
nerative. Still it has taken a place near the highest as a seat of dis- 
covery. The first discovery of a planet made on this side of the At- 
lantic was by Mr. Ferguson, in 1854, with the old telescope of the 
Observatory. Recently, the discovery of two satellites of Mars by 
Professor Hall must, by common consent of astronomers, rank as the 
greatest telescopic discovery since that of Neptune in 1846. 

And this, our home institution, so handsomely glorified, is located 
so as to kill off its officials by malaria ; and is as rickety and unsafe 
as if it had seen a century of decay. When we talk of arts and science 
let our benefactions begin at home ! 

OUK VIENNA DISGRACE. 

How unlike was thisunsubsidized exhibition compared with our part 
in th at of Vienna. I have end eavored to inform m y self as to the m aterial 
effects of the expositions at Paris and Vienna, of which we have elab- 
orate reports — six volumes of the former and four of the latter. Our 
Centennial reports, perhaps forty volumes, are not yet out. But I do 
not rely on the official reports from Vienna. They did not develop 
the unpleasant facts. I have in my hand a volume with pictorial 
illustrations, showing the beautiful grounds and the buildings which 
were erected at Vienna, and the classifications and divisions under 
which the invitation to our own country was accepted. Our part in 
that exposition was simply disgraceful. Although $200,000 were 
appropriated by Congress for our display at Vienna, decent Ameri- 
cans were ashamed of the untidy manner of it and the grossness of 
its mismanagement. Our articles on exhibition, with few excep- 
tions, were those that were common to our shops. The American 
exhibitors bore, unaided, the expense of putting their goods on ex- 
hibition. They paid for the care of them while there, as well as for 
the space occupied. They erected their own stands. There was no 
bureau for information, no plan for interpreting. Notwithstanding 
the large appropriation, we borrowed of our British cousins the very 
carpenters and laborers to do the work. The best exhibitors placed 
their goods as best they could, assisted by private purses. The dec- 
orations furnished by our commission were meager and cheap. With 
a few hundred dollars the self-constituted exhibitors made the best 
show. There was no sufficient clerical force to conduct the business, 
and most of the reports are translations from those of other nations. 
Annoyance was the rule. Says the author (Mr. Meigs) of the volume 
before me — 

In fact wh en the exhibitor arrived, his 'goods not having been sent by Govern- 
ment ships, but at his own expense, he was directed by friends to a private gen- 
tleman of Cincinnati, who spoke both German and English, and who, fortunately 
for the country, assumed to represent a large number of exhibitors. He was 



16 

enabled to do what the commission conld not do : procure the goods from the cus- 
tom-house or railways, where they were stored, and whose officers knew not what 
to do with them. 

But, after all our appropriation, what was exhibited, even with its 
aid? Some sewing-machines, inferior to the European ; some cereals 
and other products; and a pork-packing association of Cincinnati, 
which ought to have been engaged in the slaughter of the American 
commissioners instead of the innocent preparation of foreign pork. 
"We had a school exhibition which attracted attention ; not superior, 
however, to those of other countries, because not a fair sample of our 
own. The exhibition of machinery was better, and not quite so dis- 
graceful. In fact we lost prestige, and seemed rather to be retrograd- 
ing than advancing in the light of these illustrations. We had shoe- 
machinery, fire-places, puddlers, shuttle-throwers, tire-setters, of 
which we had a right to be proud ; but everything seemed to depend 
upon the exhibitor, and nothing was done by the commission from 
which to derive any benefit from the exhibition. The first chairman 
of the commission held his place to serve himself ; but something was 
rescued from the universal disgrace by several gentlemen, and among 
them Mr. Schultz, of New York. They did not need high salaries to 
do it either. Out of the $200,000 appropriated, scarcely fifty thousand 
were made serviceable. 

Go with me to Vienna during this interesting season. While the 
soul-stirring strains of Strauss transport you into a German Valhalla, 
where Dreher's beer flows more abundantly than the music, our com- 
missioners are jangling like bells out of tune. While the throngs of 
happy Viennese wander under the glare of lamps in the Volksgarten, 
or drive in state along the Prater, our American exhibitors are mak- 
ing the air vocal with bickering and jealousy. 

NORTH CAROLINA ON EXHIBITION. 

The petty wrangling, disputes and confusion incident to this dis- 
graceful exhibition were only relieved by two exceptions, and these 
were maps. The first, a map of North Carolina, with a collection of 
its products, cotton, rice, tobacco, grain, wine, and silk. The first 
expression of every American who chanced to see your map, sir, [re- 
ferring to Mr. Davis, of North Carolina,] was, "I never knew before 
the character and valueof'that State." [Laughter.] What with dilat- 
ing upon the special advantages of our Rip Van Winkle State, and 
his magnificent forests of pine; its "tar, pitch, and turpentine," the 
author from whom I quote says that map was a beautiful feature, by 
which the pupil "was not forced, but trapped, into learning its at- 
tractive merits." 

DU LUTH. 

He also calls attention to another map, which he says was most cred- 
itable to the people of this country, and of the greatest importance 
and interest to the whole world. u I speak," says he, " of the Northern 
Pacific Railroad, which showed a c very large map of their projected 
railway from the Pacific Ocean to DuLuth!' [Laughter. J Hook about 
me for the gentleman from Kentucky, [Mr. Knott,] whose name is 
as immortal as Dq Luth. [Laughter.] The map was of a very fine 
order, with beautiful marginal photographic illustrations. It showed 
the topography, the profile of its elevations, its woods, &c. It was 
accompanied with statistical information, coupled with cereals and 
products of the country." Our author does not say that the speech 
of Hon. J. Proctor Knott accompanied this map as its commentary ; 
but $200,000, Mr. Speaker, is a small sum compared with the inesti- 
mable utility of such speeches in unmasking the shams and sins of 
our speculative and subsidized fellow-countrymen. [Laughter.] 



17 

It is unnecessary to recall tne agricultural products and noble 
purposes of the owners of Du Luth to show the House how we were 
represented abroad. A few citations from my friend's remarks will add 
to the gravity of the subject. When the gentleman from Kentucky 
[Mr. Knott] was aroused to the importance of Du Luth and had 
rushed to the library, panting as the hart for the water-brook, he 
found — what? [Laughter.] One of the Du Luth maps, the very 
map at Vienna. [Laughter.] He first found the position of Du 
Luth. I quote: 

Sir, had it not been for this map, kindly furnished me by the Legislature of 
Minnesota, I might have gone down to my obscure and bumble grave in an agony 
of despair, because I could nowhere find DuLuth. [Renewed laugbter.] Had such 
been my melancholy fate, I have no doabt that with the last feeble pulsation of my 
breaking heart, with the last faint exhalation of my fleeting breath, I should have 
whispered, " Where is Du Luth?" [Hoars of laughter.] 

But, thanks to the beneficence of that band of ministering angels who have their 

bright abodes in the far-off capital of Minnesota, just as the agony of my anxiety 

was about to culminate in the frenzy of despair, this blessed map was placed in my 

hands ; and as I unfolded it a resplendent scene of ineffable glory opened before 

me, such as I imagine burst upon the enraptured vision of the wandering peri 

through the opening gates of paradise. [.Renewed laughter.] There, there for the 

first time, my enchanted eye rested upon the ravishing word "Du Luth." 

* * * * * * * 

If gentlemen will examine it they will find DuLuth not only in the center of the 
map, but represented in the center of a series of concentric circles one hundred 
miles apart, and some of them as much as four thousand miles in diameter, em- 
bracing alike in their tremendous sweep the fragrant savannas of the sunlit South, 
and the eternal solitudes of snow that mantle the ice-bound North. [Laughter.] 
How these circles were produced is perhaps one of those primordial mysteries that 
the most skillful paleologist will never be able to explain. [Renewed laughter.] 
But the fact is, sir, Du Luth is pre-eminently a central place, for I am told by gen- 
tlemen who have been so reckless of their own personal safety as to venture away 
into those awful regions where D u Luth is supposed to be that it is so exactly in the 
center of the visible universe that the sky comes down at precisely the same dis- 
tance all around it. [Boars of laughter.] 

I find by reference to this map that Du Luth is situated somewhere near the west- 
ern end of Lake Superior, but as there is no dot or other mark indicating its exact 
location I am unable to say whether it, is actually confined to any particular spot, 
or whether "it is just lying around there loose." [Renewed laughter.] I really 
cannot tell whether it is one of those ethereal creations of intellectual frost-work, 
more intangible than the rose-tinted clouds of a summer sunset ; one of those airy 
exhalations of the speculator's brain, which I am told are ever flitting in the form 
of towns and cities along those lines of railroad built with Government subsidies, 
luring the unwary settler as the mirage of the desert lures the famishing traveler 
on and ever on, until it fades away in the darkening horizon, or whether it is a 
real, bona fide, substantial city, all "staked off," with the lots marked with their 
owners's names, like that proud commercial metropolis recently discovered on the 
desirable shores of San Domingo. [Laughter.] But, however that may be, I am 
satisfied Du Luth is there, or thereabout, for I see it stated here on this map that 
it is exactly thirty-nine hundred and ninety miles from Liverpool. [Laughter.] 
Though I ha^ e no doubt, for the sake of convenience, it will be moved back ten 
miles, so as to make the distance an even four thousand. [Renewed laughter.] 

It is injustice to my friend to quote further unless I insert the whole 
speech as a commentary on subsidizing private speculations. The 
productions of that climate, its sandy soil, its Piegan Indians and 
buffalo bulls — [laughter] — but, sir, I refrain, only remarking that 
this exhibition of Du Luth was the crowning glory of the American 
exhibition at Vienna. It teaches a lesson also as to other exhibitions. 

This Vienna exhibition seemed to be utterly irresponsible. Fifty 
thousand dollars was lo be expended for salaries and expenditures of 
all persons receiving places authorized by the resolution, and as the 
artisans and scientific reporters were the only persons authorized to 
be appointed by the resolution, it is clear that the money was waste- 
fully used and has never been satisfactorily accounted for, which is 
another warning to us as to a bill of this nature 
2 co 



18 

THE FIVE-HUNDRED-MILLION-DOLLAR PETITION. 

A petition has been presented in favor of this measure, and the 
statement was widely disseminated by telegraph that it represented 
five hundred millions of capital in New York City alone. If these 
capitalists, mostly bankers, are so anxious for the exposition of their 
goods why do they not themselves pay the expenses ? Is this Con- 
gress to be forever at the call of capital ? Have not the syndicate, 
the subsidists, the tariff beneficiaries, and the bounty-fed mail lines 
had enough to do with this Congress, to its scandal? When those 
who have been made rich by tariffs and who have foisted their fal- 
lacies upon the Government through foreign exhibitions shall come 
forward to aid the workingmen in some practical way without draw- 
ing from the Treasury, I could then understand the reason why strikes 
should cease and armies be limited. 

CORN AND ITS KITCHEN. 

But to hide the little devices incorporated in this bill, to hoodwink 
the farming interests, and to serve' the rich men and manufacturers, 
who will manage for their own interests under it, an amendment will 
be offered providing that we shall have an American kitchen to cook 
Indian corn in various ways. In that kitchen are to be taught all the 
arts of making and cooking the multifarious preparations of Indian 
corn. It is to be sold as near cost as possible, and. to be distributed 
gratuitously in "receipts" for cooking, in the various tongues repre- 
sented at the exhibition. [Laughter.] A man is to be selected to stand 
in the kitchen and explain the best methods of preparing and cooking. 
We are to have interpreters in all the tongues at Paris, Chinese, Japan- 
ese, Otaheitan, Berber, Turkish, Persian, Greek, Italian, Choctaw, &c. — 
all. It will not only be pentecostal, but costly. A heathen Chinee 
approaches my friend from New York, [Mr. Hewitt,] for of course 
he will be a commissioner — I think my friend from Indiana [Mr. 
Hamilton] called him a "grand high commissionnaire of hominy.' ; 
He asks, "Amelikee man, give me co'nee on the ear." [Laughter.] 
He gives it ; hot, stale corn. Does he enjoy it ? See when he returns : 
"Amelikee man give me univelsal cholikee — hellee !" [Great laugh- 
ter.] But, sir, the alimentary question is too great for present dis- 
cussion. [Laughter.] 

This proposition for a kitchen and corn, with its interpretation, 
presupposes, first, that we are the only Country that raises this cereal 
and that no other country has any knowledge of it ; and second, 
that it will open a large market for our corn abroad. As to the 
first, I need not say what I mentioned to my colleague when he was 
present before our committee, that the armies at present on the Dan- 
ube and in Armenia are in part living uj>on maize of their own raising. 

CORN ALREADY RAISED ABROAD. 

One would infer from the statements made, that no Indian corn was 
produced in Europe. I have no statistics of recent production, but 
in Euggles's report from the Paris exposition of 1867 he aggregates the 
total European production at 288,782,340 bushels per annum. In 1860 
we had about twice that number. If the same ratio prevails, Europe 
makes about seven or eight hundred millions. And we are told that 
we should introduce our samples to induce Europe to accept maize 
into their households ! France alone must produce over seventy-five 
millions, but of that I cannot speak. Her product in 1867 was about 
thirty millions, and she has likely preserved her increase with the rest. 
But as we produce more than twice as much per capita of grain of all 
kinds there is a need, in the interest of human food and its consump- 



19 

tion, of removing needless obstacles which would render any great 
famine impossible. Free trade in corn has become an axiom of econ- 
omy and a right of humanity. How best our corn market can be 
enlarged will be considered before I conclude. I have provided for 
that in my amendment of $50,000 to be expended by the Department 
of Agriculture. 

MAIZE WELL KNOWN ABROAD. 

Maize has always been known in France. It is as well known as the 
2>dte de foie gras. That dainty is the monoply of diplomatic dinners. 
It even spread to America without an exposition. It invaded, accord- 
ing to a volume I have before me, the town of my friend who sits by 
me, (Mr. Wmght, of Pennsylvania.) 

Mr. WEIGHT. O, no. It never came to my district. 

Mr. COX, of New York. It was a coal district, in Pofctsville, Penn- 
sylvania, and it invaded it with a general indigestion. [Laughter.] 
How is it made ? Sanderson, in his " American in Paris," page 129, 
tells us : 

The goose is now inclosed immovably in a box, where it is crammed with maize 
and poppy-oil and other succulent food, and its eyes put out so that it may give the 
whole of its powers to digestion— as that old Greek philosopher, who put out his 
eyes to give the whole mind to reflection — and a dropsical repletion of the liver being 
produced by the atony of the absorbents, the liver (the only part of a goose that is 
now of any account in Europe,) is ready for the market. 

Maize for such a purpose becomes not only indispensable, but dip- 
lomatic, constitutional, and patriotic. [Laughter.] 

Maize was well known to Europe, as early as when Joel Barlow 
executed his " Hasty-Pudding." The lively, entertaining, and homely 
gaiety of that poem is in agreeable contrast with the gravity and 
stateliness of the author's general style and the reports that come to 
us from the Paris exposition of 1867. Barlow had traveled abroad. 
He had worshiped the tawny Ceres in other lands ; his heart had ex- 
panded to meet it in Savoy, where his poem was written. He did 
not find it in Paris, where shameless Bacchus reveled, nor in London, 
lost in smoke and steeped in tea ; but he " recognized its yellow face, 
that strong complexion of true Indian race," at the foot of the Alps. 
He had found it in the Levant under the alias of polanta ; he found it 
in France as polante ; as mush in Pennsylvania ; suppaivn in New York, 
the hasty-pudding of the Yankee ; under one or another name he found 
it wherever he roamed. It was not always cooked as succotash, nor 
blended with beans, nor made into hoe-cake; but wherever the sun 
shone there grew the maize. So that if this great product, estimated 
at a billion and a half bushels, and which is so cheap in the West that 
they burn it for fuel, is to undergo the cost of transportation to the 
seaboard, which is the price of its production, and then go abroad, 
three thousand miles beyond the starving denizens of our great cities, 
is already familiar to the European and Asiatic world, it seems like 
"carrying coals to Newcastle" or bonnets to Paris, to transport it to 
France in order to show the pupils of Messieurs Soyer, Blot, and Sa- 
varin how to cook it. [Laughter.] 

STATESMANSHIP CORNED. 

Much of my speech upon this topic has been anticipated by the 
newspaper comments called forth by the interesting conversations 
of Governor Tilden and the zealous co-operation of my colleague, 
[Mr. Hewitt.] Full of love for the laboring-man and the great corn- 
growing West and South, they have returned to their native land 
with their hands horny with toil in this foreign corn-field. [Laughter.] 
Our New York avenues are to be razed from their foundations, and those 



20 

seats of luxury are to give place to that plant whose green spire de- 
clares the sprouting root when the tender germ begins to shoot ! Sir, 
not only will the sweat stream from every cook among the effete kitch- 
ens of Europe, but the stalwart sons of toil in our luxurious cities will 
bead their brows with labor that their simple meals shall be succo- 
tash, hoe-cakes, and mush. 

INFAMOUS JOURNALISM. 

One of onr journalists in New York basely charges that the crafty 
Tilden knew, that my humanitarian colleague [Mr. Hewitt] knew, that 
this measure would be introduced into Congress, and predicted an in- 
crease in the consumption of our corn of over the sixty million bushels 
which it reached last year. [Laughter.] These prophecies are in- 
spired by the same genius that discerned in the Centennial a mode of 
paying our public debt and reviving our paralyzed industries. Another 
journalist charges further that my colleague wished to avenge himself 
on pauperized Europe by introducing corn as a regular article of diet. 
[Great laughter.]" It is also hinted that some of our distinguished 
statesmen will be called upon to minister to the long line of flaneurs 
and petits-maUres along the boulevards, while they illustrate how the 
smoking cob can be gnawed and the dulcet sound of " hot corn " lull 
them at night into sweet dreams of home. [Laughter.] He then goes 
so far as to hint that the " pop-corn" fiend will be introduced upon 
the railways of France. [Laughter.] 

INVASION OF GAUL. 

But, Mr. Chairman, have we no cherished associations with France, 
growing out of our revolutionary era, which forbid us to exhibit toward 
that friendly nation such a spirit of revenge and lack of comity? I 
have faith in the stern, repressive power of the French government, 
under its present military president, aided by the advice of the Amer- 
ican Csesar, General Grant, against such unwarrantable irruptions 
into Gaul. It is many years since that an Indiana minister to Berlin 
labored to qualify the European stomach for this American diet. His 
experiment was tried upon Humboldt. It failed; failed, sir, upon 
griddle-cakes for breakfast, as the pihce de resistance. [Laughter.] 
It failed, even though the Indiana matron compounded it with her 
own skillful hands. It failed, sir, although the sweet treacle, tinct 
with the maple of Vermont, with its dulcet sirup, titillated the palate 
and enthused the fancy. [Laughter.] Why, sir, since this scheme, 
which contemplated both hog and hominy, both patriotism and grits, 
both corn-dodgers and corn-juice, failed, even though an American 
minister, racy of the western soil, had earnestly endeavored to accom- 
plish it, what can be expected from a body of political Jeremy Did- 
cllers and self-sufficient commissioners who know not a full ear from a 
nubbin! [Laughter.] 

LET US SHOW THE GROWING CORN. 

The amendment under consideration only proposes to prepare and 
cook the maize in the presence of the assembled. French. This requires 
an explanation. Why not show how it is grown, how the hills are 
planted and hoed, the shooting of the tender but not dangerous 
germ ; then the way to protect with ashes from the grub-worm and 
frighten off birds with the scarecrow, one of the most interesting 
images of western production, requiring a separate exhibition with 
varieties all along from Virginia round to Kansas. [Laughter.] If 
our States are required to send effigies of their great men to fill our 
niches in this Capitol, why should not our Paris exposition glory in 
distinct scarecrows from every one of our free and independent 



21 

States? Why not, under favoring conditions, show the silky fringes 
of the inchoate corn (is not France the land of silk ?) and the roasting 
ear, ready for the youngster's larceny and the family succotash ? 
Why not, as an addition to the zoological exhibition, export the sly 
'coon and nimble squirrel, enriching their stores like drones or lobby- 
ists from honest toil ? [Laughter.] Why limit the exhibition to 
cookery, which the French so well understand ? 

HUSKING. 

Let there be a corn-shucking on the Trocadero, when the ear is full 
ripe for the harvest; then let the bursting corn arise upon the 
banks of the Seine, aloof from the incursive rat and the waters' flow. 
Then, O, joy ! let us show the world the old-fashioned husking, before 
machinery depoetized the rustic frolic. What a reformatory sight in 
bad, luxurious Paris ! Would that it were permitted the Foreign 
Affairs Committee to take part in it, with its grave but festive chair- 
man. [Laughter.] How happy to be surrounded by the attractive 
grisettes and coquettish lorettes, or mayhap by the wooden-shod peas- 
ant girls of sweet Normandy by the sea, assisted of course by my col- 
league as chief interpreter. [Laughter.] I think I see these gentle 
nymphs of Paris, in a beautiful circle, aiding us to tear off the dry 
envelope from the golden ear, while the song of Lord Lovell, who went 
far countries for to see, accompanied by sweet cider, passes around ! 
My honored chairman [Mr. Swann] is in their midst. [Laughter.] 
Shall 1 omit my colleague [Mr. Hewitt] from the charmed circle? 
[Laughter. ] I should love to be with them [laughter] when the gentle 
usage begins. Delicious custom ! But never more so than when, with 
scream and titter, some lucky maiden cries, " La rouge ! la rouge ! I 
have found the red ear ! " Would my honored chairman be reluctant ? 
Suppose a dark eyed maid of Marseilles had a red ear — would he be 
reluctant ? [Laughter.] If he were, would not my colleague take his 
place? [Laughter.] He would. Would my colleague with modest 
grace shrink from the penalty which follows ? [Great laughter, dur- 
ing which Mr. Hewitt kissed his hand to his colleague. ] Would not 
Ceres be dethroned for another goddess : Hominum, div unique volun- 
tas? I hear my colleague sigh. [Laughter.] Methinks I hear the 
merry demoiselle crying "Embrassez-moi, clier monsieur; embrassez-moi ! " 
[Great confusion and laughter. ] Would he, could he, refuse the prof- 
fered kiss? [Laughter.] And if perchance the red ear fell to the in- 
genious inventor of this "rnaizy" plan — without giving way for a 
reply — I ask him now and here, would he carry out the custom and 
kiss the reluctant maids all around ? If he will say he would, then 
there is no need of further appropriation. [Laughter.] It will pay 
for itself ! [Great laughter.] 

FRENCH COOKERY TO BE IMPROVED. 

What, carry cookery to Paris! Why a French cook spends a life 
on a single dish. The French are sensitive to the least aberration in 
cookery. It is known that the great Vattel exclaimed: "The roast 
has failed at two tables." He retired to his room in vexation and 
expired. Is it possible that we can teach such a fastidious people to 
eat mush and pone ? If this kitchen is intended to punish France by 
giving it a universal colic on green corn, I can understand it. Is 
my colleague to be allowed to wreak his disappointments in Amer- 
ica on a people not responsible for the returning board of Louisiana 
or the inauguration of President Hayes? Sir, such motives should, 
not influence legislation. 



22 

SOCIAL SCIENCE VIEW OF A CORN KITCHEN. 

But perhaps rny colleague has humanitarian ends in view. He would 
rescue France from wild propensities, social freedom, and sensual grat- 
ification. But will corn or its essence do it ? Will the wanderer in the 
Prada, the Eue Saint Honored and the Salle Victorie, saloons of which 
the quadroon balls of New Orleans are mere shadows — be reclaimed 
by corn ? It is said that France is degenerating, its births falling 
off, its population decreasing. Eureka! I have the idea. I find it 
from Barlow's muse. He tells us in poetic measure how his father 
loved mush, what vigor he had : that ten sturdy freemen from his loins 
attestedit; thatall his own bones were made of Indian corn. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

IDIOSYNCRASIES OF EXHIBITORS. 

Some applications to other exhibitions were as odd as is this corn- 
kitchen contrivance. An eccentric applicant desired to exhibit a 
flying-machine under the great dome at London, in 1852. Had he 
succeeded he would have shot out through the costly glass cupola. 
Another proposed to exhibit an epic poem in the picture-gallery. An 
eight-foot giant dressed in the time of Henry IV was offered as an 
usher; a gardener proposed improvements in surgical implements ; a 
doctor, a contrivance to ripen fruits ; a grocer, a new projectile for 
hearvy ordnance ; a Cambridge student, a floating-battery ; an ac- 
countant, an omuitonic flute ; a lawyer, spring-heel boots, [laughter ; ] 
a book-binder, an interminable suspension bridge ; a broker, a new 
kind of embroidery; a private secretary, gooseberry-wine ; a gentle- 
man, a turn-up bedstead for a shoemaker ; a member of Parliament, 
a patent moustache-guard with protection from soup, [laughter;] and 
a Frenchman presented an exalted affinity or homogene equilibrium of 
individual uniU affected through its constituent atoms by a chemical 
combination with a reduction of the pretended simple element, re- 
turned to the primitive root. [Great laughter.] Then why should 
not my amiable bucolic colleague, so experienced in iron and electoral 
commissions, follow these many precedents and present at the con- 
gregation of the nations a cuisine redolent with this life-giving, life- 
supporting, all-soul-reviving, luscious cereal, and spread its merits in 
foreign tongues to the uninformed peoples of the world! Where, 
O, where, would Colonel Sellers be with his famous eye-water for the 
four hundred millions of double-eyed Asiatics or his wonderful corner 
in corn? He fades before this all-comprehensive project. 

But while we may commend this great and beneficent idea, always 
supposing that it can be accomplished without an appropriation, 
must we not look at its possible impediments and reception ? For if 
this arrangement is made, one thing must be provided in the mush- 
and-milk department. Barlow sings it in his " Hasty-Puddiug." There 
must be a different spoon from that of Gaul, which was contrived to 
scoop in ample draughts the thin diluted soup. In attracting the 
French peasant from his black bread and thin wine, his soupe maigre 
and indigestible truffles, we must adjust the cutlery to the food and 
the food to the cutlery ; and this will require a new tariff. Besides, 
this forced installation of our Ceres may meet with resistance — doubt- 
less will — and I shudder at the prospective conflict ; for has not the 
experiment been tried once before, when America, in closest sympa- 
thy with Ireland's suffering masses, offered her corn, and was most 
ignominiously repulsed by the expected recipients? So, I fear, may 
be the result of our corn mission! They will conceive it to be an- 
other of our force measures and resist. 



23 

MAGNITUDE OF THE CORN INVASION. 

Sir, Russia invades Turkey to force Christianity into the Moslem 
conscience, and Turkey turns the tide of war against the invader in 
defense of her suzerainty. 

The world stands on tiptoe, erectis auribus, looking toward Ararat 
and the deluge of blood along the blue Danube, waiting the result of 
this momentous conflict of the ages. But, sir, Russia and Turkey, 
with their embattling hosts, present no such array as will be that 
of the terrific onslaught of my colleague in the great corn inva- 
sion of the nineteenth century. [Laughter.] It outrivals Don Quixote, 
who, in his hallucination, charged with all his chivalry, upon a flock 
of sheep, with not less discretion and no greater love for the simple 
shepherds and their flocks than for the knightly regard he had for 
his fair Dulcinea cuisiniere. But, sir, he did it without any other ap- 
propriation than that furnished by poor Sancho's wallet! [Laughter.] 

UNFETTERED AND UNSUBSIDIZED TRADE. 

Seriously, Mr. Speaker, almost every element of American industry 
and manufacturing, under private enterprise will find its proper mar- 
ket in Europe. I have seen the Maid of Saragossa, in Spain, " trip 
the light fantastic toe " upon the the treadle of our sewing-machines; 
our agricultural implements have their agencies throughout Europe. 
The five hundred million dollars' worth of petitioners as they saunter 
through the avenues of Paris or under the lindens of Berlin are not 
always so much at leisure but that they can keep an eye to business. 
Our grains will go wherever there is a demand for them, for life de- 
pends on them. Under proper reciprocity our wheat exports to Great 
Britain might double in one year their sixty millions without an ap- 
propriation. The exportation of American watches, superior to the 
Swiss, already has an enlarged market without an appropriation. 
Our whiskies and high wines are indisDensable to give additional 
strength to the wines of Bordeaux, Oporto, and Xeres. The gentle- 
man from Connecticut, my friend, (Mr. Landers,) has already sent his 
cutlery to Sheffield without an appropriation and in spite of restric- 
tion. American cottons will find their way beyond the barriers of 
China and Japan, along with our sewing-machines. It is well, sir, 
to have a flag to cover an appropriation ; sometimes the flag without 
the appropriation may be better. 

Mr. Speaker, I say it with all respect to the gentlemen who favor 
this measure, with the five hundred millions of capital which back 
it, that not one man truly representative of labor would ever be 
selected under its provisions. It is intended to help the men of velvet 
paws who would, if they could, displace the simplicity of our habits 
by the luxury of Heliogabalus. If the nine acres of carpeting in the 
Treasury Department were confiscated, it would enable our Parisian 
voluptuaries who favor the Napoleonic dynasty in their colony at 
Paris to visit that other exhibition, the Jardin Mabille, and dance the 
can-can after a plentiful consumption of American corn. Is it not 
enough for us to throw over this exhibition the mutuality of our cour- 
tesy and the aegis of our Government, without sending bounties to 
the five-hundred-million-dollar petitioners who come to Congress for 
help ? 

FOREIGN MARKETS— HOW TO GET THEM. 

T The war going on in the Orient will do more for mere material 
America than all the palaces dedicated so ostentatiously to peace. 
Guns, drums, trumpets, blunderbusses, and thunder, with a plentiful 
supply of breadstuffs, will open our trade and give us markets. There 



\ 



24 

is always a good from an ill. Wholesome berries thrive and ripen 
"best, neighbored by fruits of baser quality. War may hurt some, 
while it helps others. There is a growing demand daily for all we 
produce really needed abroad. To increase that demand, legislation 
is necessary ; but not of this kind. These expositions have been used 
to destroy our industries through selfish tariff exactions. Who helped 
will appear in the quotations I will make presently. 

EXPOSITIONS USED TO PROPAGATE PROTECTION. 

The Paris exposition had a report by the author of the present 
bill upon the production of iron and steel in its economic and social 
relations, by Abram S. Hewitt, United States commissioner. Was 
that in the interest of the workingmen ? Doubtless it was so intended, 
and it reads very plausibly. It showed great familiarity with the 
ores, with girders, plates and rods, and processes of manufacture and 
qualities of different materials in Europe. It had also an appendix 
in relation to Bessamer steel, to which I will refer directly in an 
interesting connection. In that report were described, with great 
skill and power of analysis, specimens of material, machinery, and 
processes of manufacture which differ substantially from the experi- 
ence of the United States. This was interesting, and might have been 
collected by any intelligent person, with the payment of a thousand 
dollars, and without an exposition. An honorary commissioner had 
the entree of all the factories and mines of Europe, without a salary. 
But the glory and genius of this report was not so much its differen- 
tial statement and its elaborate collection of facts as its discussion 
of protective and restrictive legislation. Granting all the good objects 
and intentions of the author as to the working classes, no one can 
mistake the meaning of his conclusion on page 60, where he says : 

It is scarcely possible longer to deny that the first step toward securing to the 
working classes an adequate reward for their labor is such legislation as protects 
theru from the evils which seem to be inseparable from unrestrained competition 
between nations and men, which experience has shown to result in the utter dis- 
regard of the moral and physical condition and welfare of the working classes, 
unless regulated by positive and legal enactment. 

It cannot be denied, therefore, that one of the results of the Paris 
exposition, in so far as iron and steel were concerned, was the propa- 
gation of the idea that we can impose such a duty on foreign iron as 
will make up for the difference in the amount of wages paid for 
making a ton of iron in Europe and this country, less the expense of 
transportation. The author of this essay based his tariff notions on 
the old fallacy of the wages of labor, and thus a dead school of 
economy was .attempted to be revived by an American commissioner. 

Another illustration of the covert way in which protectionists have 
used these exhibitions to further their selfish interests is found in 
another report from Paris in 1867. I call attention especially on the 
article on wool and its manufacture, in which everything is turned in 
favor of our vicious tariff system. Doubtless the same thing can be 
found in other reports. I am told that the Centennial reports are full 
of this obsolete protective nonsense. From these few extracts we may 
learn all. After showing that the greater cost of fabricating cloths 
in this oountry is not owing to any want of natural advantages, nor 
any deficiency in skill or labor, the partisan commissioner denies, 
" that the manufacture is sustained only by artificial stimulus and 
rendering its productions as unnatural, to use Adam Smith's often 
quoted comparison, as that of wine produced from grapes grown in 
the greenhouses of Scotland." 



25 

He further says : 

Having placed ourselves upon an equality with, other nations in enterprise and 
skill, our power of unaided competition has reached its limit, and our woolen 
industry could not sustain itself in competition with foreign production unless 
placed upon an equality in the command of capital, or unless the disparity against 
us were neutralized by legislative provisions. It is only to neutralize the foreign 
advantages of cheap capital and labor that protective, or, more properly speaking, 
defensive, duties are demanded by the woolen manufacturers. The duties on wool 
paid by the manufacturer, and theoretically reimbursed by the specific duties on 
the cloth, are demanded by the American wool-growers for the same reason. "We 
speak only for our own industry, and with respect to that it is asserted with the 
utmost confidence that every spindle and loom employed in it would be stopped by 
the breaking down of the defensive barriers existing in tariff legislation. 

The success of our domestic woolen industry thus becomes identified with our 
agricultural prosperity. Such considerations would seem to place it beyond all 
question that our national interests require that we should repel the cheap fabrics 
of Europe, even at considerable sacrifice, that we may appropriate for ourselves 
the labor and profit of their production. 

UNRESTRAINED COMPETITION. 

To a large portion of this House it is unnecessary to show that unre- 
strained competition is inseparable from liberty of trade between 
nations and men. It is useless now to argue that cheap iron and 
clothing are of the utmost use to our people. Nor is it necessary to 
show, as to this measure, that if competition be restrained the exposi- 
tion of the labor of different nations and their products and raw 
material is an expensive and tantalizing^sham. 

FRENCH AND AMERICAN TARIFFS. 

Gentlemen should consider in this connection the French tariff as 
well as our own, and its bearing on the Paris exhibition. What 
effect will it have upon any prospective trade or export to that coun- 
try? Here will be found the reasons for the adverse action of the 
German government, and not any national prejudice. Why do we 
export so little to France ? Except tobacco, a few barrels, petroleum, 
and cotton, we have but a limited trade. France reciprocates with 
England through the Cobden and Chevalier treaty of mutuality. It 
was of reciprocal advantage. France treats us as we do her. It is 
mutual brigandage to both peoples through our tariffs. They buy 
tobacco of us because it is better and cheaper than elsewhere ; and. 
they obtain it even cheaper than our own citizens, because they buy 
in larger quantities. Our barrels are returned to us full of decoc- 
tions of logwood, &c. ; and they buy petroleum because they cannot 
buy elsewhere. Here is another example : Take this little folding- 
scissors, which I would like the ladies in the galleries to see. It 
was invented and made here and patented in France. The pat- 
entees were expecting and preparing for large sales during the 
Exhibition. Looking for the charges of duties, they find them marked 
with cutlery "jproMMe," and this word is the cause of our small ex- 
ports to that country, for just those goods which we export every- 
where are either prohibited or taxed so heavily as to work the same 
as prohibition. So is cast-iron, iron- work, nails, screws, &c, leather, 
manufactures of paper, cotton yarns and manufactures of cotton, 
soap, perfumery, and hundreds of other articles prohibited. Let the 
question be fully understood. The French nation is looked upon as 
so friendly to us' that to refuse them would seem ungrateful and 
uncourteous. But what advantage can we derive from exhibiting 
goods which we cannot sell nor export to France? It would be like 
exhibiting to Dives the glories of Paradise ; or to a thirsty army, a 
mirage of cool streams. The articles shown and exhibited which 
really please will simply be copied; for no one can import them: 
they are " ProMlee." Who, then, gains by the exposition of them ? 



26 

BURDENS ON LABOK BY TARIFFS. 

But, sir, as most of the burdens upon our laboring-men have come 
upon them because of the indirect protective bounties mostly levied 
upon labor, is it not easy to see that the production of such reports 
as those from which I have quoted is the result of a selfish and unsci- 
entific economy ? 

CENTENNIAL PROPHECIES AND THEIR FAILURE. 

When the Centennial was before Congress, my sanguine colleague 
who has introduced this measure, considered that the Centennial 
would be a paying investment. It would put our own money into 
rapid circulation; it would help our railways, hotels and shops; 
re-open the channels of business, not to be clogged again with the 
debris of another financial convulsion. Labor would no longer stand 
idle, consuming without producing ; the country would feel better ; 
confidence would be restored ; and the enterprise and energies of our 
people once more assert themselves in opening new highways of 
communication. 

It would be the resurrection of industry; new and suggestive ideas 
would be aroused; foreign capital would be attracted hither; we 
should be able to negotiate our new loans at the lowest rate, raising 
our credit to a level with that of Great Britain. A heavy annual 
burden of taxation upon productive industries would be removed, and 
a thousand other rhetorical blessings were promised, which came to 
pass in the most severely ironical manner. Under such specious and 
pleasant prospects we gave $600,000 to the Centennial ; and, in addi- 
tion, there was an act of June 1, 1872, (17 Statutes, 203,) in which it 
was provided that the appropriation of $1,500,000, made by the act 
of February 16, 1876, (19 Statutes, 3,) must be paid into the Treasury 
of the United States before any division of assets should be made 
among the stockholders in satisfaction and discharge of the capital 
stock. And the Supreme Court decided (Otto, 505) that Congress did 
not intend by the act of 1876 to change the order of distribution as 
provided by that of 1872. 

How the Centennial itself paid its promoters, and its peculiar at- 
tempt to hold on to the million and a half which we had only loaned. 
and to make the United States not a preferred but a common cred- 
itor, eventuated, the decision of Judge Waite amply illustrates. It 
is but; another example of how the bounty of this Government is 
treated by men of large capital and unbounded infidelity to their en- 
gagements. 

WHAT LESSONS THE CENTENNIAL TEACHES. 

Besides, does not our Centennial teach us other lessons ? Not that 
British gold was used there to corrupt our statesmen to favor British 
interests ; for I believe my friend from Pennsylvania, Judge Kelley, 
was the only recipient of British gold, for he rented his house to the 
British commission ! But the farce of inviting the world to show off 
with us in competition here where every article has its tariff of re- 
striction or prohibition! It was regarded as the sublimity of ab- 
surdity. 

General Walker, in the International Review for July-August, 1877, 
gives these pertinent reasons why there was a comparatively poor 
show at the Centennial of foreign goods. I quote : 

A cause -which importantly affected the commercial interest of Europe in the dis- 
play of products at Philadelphia, to the injury of the exhibition, was the high tariff 
maintained by the United States ; a tariff which, within many lines of production, 
is intended to be, and is, prohibitory. Such a tariff, equally whether its effect 
upon our domestic industry has been good or bad, must, in the nature of the case, 



27 

have impaired, where it did not destroy, the interest which foreign producers and 
dealers might otherwise have felt in the display of their wares. 

When it is considered how short is our free list, how high the grade of duties — 
the average impost on dutiable articles being in 1875, 40.6 per cent., 50, 60, and 70 
percent, being not uncommon, and 80 and even 90 per cent not unknown — it must 
appear how different an exhibition at Philadelphia under such a regime inevitably 
would be from one held in a country inviting foreign competition within its mar- 
kets. 

"While the effect of the tariff was thus to cut in at a hundred places upon the 
Exhibition it especially affected the display of silk and woolen goods. The gratu- 
lations so frequently expressed over the American exhibit were measurably justified 
if placed on the ground of the progress made in these branches of manufacture and 
the really high degree of excellence attained in many lines of production. But when 
our boasting took the form of alleging that foreign countries showed in this line 
or in that line nothing to surpass or to equal the products of American mills, we 
were justly rebuked by a reference to our tariff, which imposes, duties on articles of 
silk or of wool rising, on a large part of our importation, to 60 per cent., and in many 
cases reaching 80 and 90 per cent. 

The average duty collected in 1875 on the druggets and bookings imported was 
96 per cent. ; on many grades of flannel 80 and 90 per cent. ; on velvets and shawls 
of silk, and on all non-enumerated articles of the same material, the duty was 60 
per cent. ; on Brussels carpets made by the Jacquard machinery between 60 and 65 
per cent. 

LARGER CONSUMPTION. 

Mr. Speaker, if we would assist our industries, enlarge our market, 
and attract with all our forces, social and political, other people to 
our shores, let us repeal these absurd and repellant policies. Let us 
avoid giving bounties to a selfish class. If we want an outlet for our 
productions, let us enlarge the sphere of consumption. If we will 
make an alliance of physical with intellectual force, and lift the hie- 
rarchy of labor into a higher plane ; if we would extend the hand of 
fellowship to other nations, we have something more to do than to 
create a simple display of goods upon a stall in a foreign land. What 
avails a public fete or show, with a Chinese wall placed round our 
own country by restrictive legislation. Take the duties off our fif- 
teen hundred taxable articles, and you have a market with all the 
world. You withdraw the veil which hangs over our industries, and 
make America itself a universal exhibition. We want no edifices of 
iron and glass to give impetus to manufactures. Your enchantment 
to provoke improvement and increase of manufactures is a cheap 
market, not merely for your manufactures, but for your breadstuffs. 
Liberalities in exchange bring together the skillful manufacturer 
and the cheap transporter. What France and England did by reci- 
procity, we may do. No palatial prodigies like the Crystal Palace or V 



the Ausstellung Alia are half so potent as a cheap market. It is the 
lamp of Aladdin. It accomplishes miracles, saves from revolution 
and distress, and destitution and poverty, and despair and death. 

Man has made his railways upon the earth, the sea has become an 
economical means of transit through steam ; there is no quest, even 
to the uttermost parts of the earth, in which our enterprise may not 
go with the cheap market. If isolated, with all our pre-eminence in 
industry, with all our power to create motion in matter — we fail. 
Our mines may give us silver and gold, our valleys maize and wheat, 
war may take from the fields of labor its millions of men in other 
lands, we may know what Carlyle said when he sang of tools and 
the man, and the power of the dwarf behind the engine to remove 
mountains ; but all is of no avail without an outlet for our products. 
Governments may give bounties, as Napoleon did, for the substitu- 
tion of flax for cotton to destroy the commerce of a neighbor, but 
the restricting invention returns to plague the inventor. The active, 
free-trading nation will become enriched thereby. We may have a the 



/ 



28 

process by which steelis made in great retorts by the ton, the refine- 
ments of the spectroscope, but at last the genii that wait upon the 
magic ring of prosperity enter the unrestrained and cheap market. 
In vain legislators ! do ye endeavor to oppose the designs of Provi- 
dence, for the order of God is freedom of exchange ! 

BUY, IP YOU WOULD SELL. 

When this country, by a series of insane tariffs, sought to exclude 
the merchandise of other nations, it did not grow rich. When Eng- 
land, in 1846, repealed her corn laws, she made a new commercial sys- 
tem that gave her the exchanges of the world. Maine cannot sell 
her timber abroad with a tariff which taxes the salt for her fish. 
Illinois cannot find as good a market for her teeming granaries in the 
Old World when she stops the fabrics of England and France. If we 
would sell our machines and grains to France, we must buy her olive 
oil and silk. The rule has no exception. You cannot make a bargain 
without two parties. There is no sale without a purchase. Can you 
sell to one without receiving from him and expect to remain solvent? 
Try to sell abroad without purchasing abroad and you will make a 
failure, and a failure more absurd than any which Bastiat demon- 
strates or China once illustrated. 

WELCOME TO ALL. 

It is not in expositions, in subsidies, that our limitless prairies and 
abounding forests, or our commercial and manufacturing greatness 
will attract the overpopulated countries of the Old World. Let Amer- 
ica open her arms to the hungry and the hopeless, and bid the home- 
less come over sea and land. Let them delve in our mines, plow in our 
soil. We have air, and water, and. bread, and gold and silver, riches, 
happiness, and labor for all who come. Only there stands in the 
path the one gaunt specter of selfish and unmitigated greed through 
legislation. The first step to be taken by the American Congress 
for the revival and prosperity of our country is freedom of trade 
without the folly of shackeling it. Therefore let our appeal to the 
world be made : Ad nos ad salutarum undam, venite, populi. [Applause. ] 



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